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Bookkeeping Machines

Remington Rand

Remington Rand bookkeeping machines, like others, reflect the combination of ideas from several sources. In 1903, a St. Louis company began manufacturing an adding typewriter invented by Hubert Hopkins, the brother of William Hopkins of the Moon-Hopkins billing machine. James Dalton gained control of the firm, moved it to Missouri, and sold both adding and bookkeeping machines under the Dalton name. Meanwhile, the machinist John C. Wahl of Chicago and his associates took out several patents for improvements for adding and subtracting attachments for typewriters. These devices were incorporated in some Remington typewriters. Wahl soon turned his attention to manufacturing pens and mechanical pencils. In 1920, he sold his adding machine patents to Remington outright.

In 1927, Remington, Dalton and several other office machine companies merged to form Remington Rand. A long line of Remington Rand bookkeeping machines followed. The company also would take an interest in tabulating machines and then, as Sperry Rand and then Unisys, in computers.